


My Brain Occasionally Malfunctions

by lanestreets



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Epilepsy, Seizures, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 02:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14226978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lanestreets/pseuds/lanestreets
Summary: Dick was shot in the head. Such a serious injury is not without consequence.In which Dick's gunshot wound causes him to develop epilepsy and Jason has some thoughts on the fact that Dick tried to hide it from them.





	My Brain Occasionally Malfunctions

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact, i have a seizure disorder, and my brother's epileptic. i'm most definitely not projecting or anything like that, right? right. anyway, jason thinks dick's on drugs for a second, so look out for that, and also the whole seizure thing. 
> 
> onward.

Dick has his first seizure a week after he gets out of surgery. 

He’s in the medical bay in the bunker, lying on a cot and watching Damian go over case files when suddenly he goes clammy and his eyes get very far away. Dick looks at Damian like he doesn’t know who his brother is, and looks like he wants to ask a question, but he doesn’t get the chance. 

He barely gets the chance to say the word “Bucket”, before he’s gagging. 

Damian scrambles for the bin at the end of the bed, and just gets it under Dick’s face in time. Dick throws up bile, his hands trembling as he tries to grasp the edges of the bin. Several things happen very fast after that.

He retches one last time. 

He settles back into his bed. 

His fingers twitch.

His arm jerks up towards his chest. 

His eyes roll listlessly up into his head.

The entire left side of Dick’s body starts seizing. 

Damian slams the panic button at Dick’s bedside. 

He knows what’s happening, has basic knowledge on what a seizure is, but he has no idea how to handle this. 

It takes Bruce too long to get to the bunker. 

It takes Dick too long to stop seizing. 

It takes too long for Damian’s hands to stop shaking after Dick comes out of the seizure. 

Alfred wraps and arm around Damian’s shoulder for one brief moment. For once, Damian doesn’t protest. 

He looks very much his age. 

It’s the first thing Dick sees when he comes out of it. 

That, in itself, is enough to terrify him. 

~*~

Leslie comes by later that day. 

Not twenty minutes later, Leslie Thompkins is in the Watchtower for the first time, and Dick is hooked up to machines and there are tests and results and more tests and more results and scans and results and more and more and more and more. 

Dick’s trembling by the end of it. 

For all he’s faced before, this is still the more terrifying thing he’s ever lived through. The fact that Damian’s refusing to leave his side doesn’t really help settle any nerves. 

Several hours later, there’s a definitive answer. 

Dick has epilepsy. 

Caused by the gunshot wound to the head that he suffered. 

Dick really doesn’t know why he’s surprised at this point. His life’s been taking a nosedive lately, why not add one more thing to it? 

Leslie, Bruce, Damian, Alfred and Doctor Midnite are the only ones who know, now. 

Dick demands they keep it that way. 

Leslie and Doc Midnite launch immediately into a list of all the reasons why that is a horrible idea and how dangerous that is, especially given both of his lines of work. He handles firearms, for fuck’s sake, he needs to tell somebody, this isn’t something he can keep quiet. 

He agrees to inform his employers, and that’s it. 

Leslie is very obviously disgruntled but it is Dick’s decision, in the end. 

And Dick Grayson is nothing if not stubborn. 

~*~

He gets a medical ID bracelet, very reluctantly. 

He wears long sleeves all the time anyway, to hide the scars. What’s one more thing to hide? It’s easy to tuck the bracelet under his sleeve and ignore its existence. He agrees to stay at the manor while they get his medication squared away. It’s safer that way. Loathe as he is to admit it, Dick does feel a little anxious about being alone in his apartment at the moment. 

He has three more seizures in the next couple months and they up his dosage twice before the medication actually starts to do its job. Dick finally doesn’t feel so antsy about being alone after a month passes without him having a seizure. 

He’s back at work, even if he is riding a desk until he’s certain the medication is working properly. 

Things finally seem like they’re going back to normal.

He goes back to staying in his apartment six months later, and he’s finally feeling like he can breathe again. 

And then he has to pull a double shift at the station because of an Arkham breakout. By the time it’s over he’s exhausted, he’s starving and he’s ridiculously dehydrated. He thinks that last one’s cause he’d had a bit too much coffee to stay awake. 

He’s five blocks away from his apartment when he feels it. His peripheral vision starts to shake, and then goes black. He tastes metal on the back of his tongue. As he stumbles forward, he has to shove back a dizzying wave of nausea. He’s too far away from home. A car honks and it’s so loud to him he feels like his eardrums are going to explode. 

He’s not going to make it home. 

There’s a place, a block away. He doesn’t remember why, but he has to get there. He has to. He knows it’ll be safe. 

So he stumbles to this place he only half remembers and presses buttons until someone buzzes him in and then hurries up to the top floor in the elevator and… he forgets what he’s doing. 

There’s a door in front of him. 

His door? 

He doesn’t know. 

He knocks once. 

A man he knows he should recognize slams the door open a second later. 

“Dickhead, what the fuck are you doing he… Jesus, what happened to you, Dick?”

Dick. That’s him. That’s his name. He knows that. 

He forgets who this man with the shock of white hair at the front of his dark curls is. He knows him. He has no idea who he is. 

Where is he again?

“Who are you?” Dick asks, tongue heavy in his mouth, the metal taste getting stronger with every second. He’s surprised he’s made it this far, actually. 

He doesn’t know why he’s surprised but he knows he is. 

“Dick?”

“No that’s me.”

“Come on, let’s get you sitting down, Goldie,” the man with the black and white hair says. 

The door slams shut behind them and Dick claps his hands over his ears. 

When he opens his eyes again, they’re in the apartment, and he’s sitting on the couch, with the man crouched in front of him. He lists sideways, and the man has to right him. 

There’s a bucket between his feet. 

Good. 

Dick slumps forward and throws up the meager contents of his stomach, and the man has to stop him from falling head first off the couch. Dick would appreciate that more if he knew what was going on. 

His eyes roll back into his head and he doesn’t know much of anything after that. 

He doesn’t know how long it is before he knows what’s going on again. 

“Wha’s…” he mumbles, looking around wildly. Oh. That was a mistake. His entire head throbs. His stomach churns. The light burns his eyes. His muscles feel sore. 

He has a sinking feeling in his gut. 

“Dick? Oh thank fuck,” someone… no. Not someone. Jason. Jason mutters. “Yeah he’s awake.” He’s not talking to Dick now. He’s talking to no one. No, he’s talking into his phone. Okay. “He’s awake, seems to be getting more lucid. Yeah, I know seizure first aid. I grew up in a house with an addict, of course I do, Bruce. You’re stalling. Why the fuck didn’t you say something about Dick having seizures? Oh, I didn’t ask? How the fuck old are you, five? I thought you were supposed to be the adult here. Anyway. Let me ask now. How long has he been having seizures? Six months ago? Great. Now how long has he been using? Don’t be dense! How long has Dick been on drugs? How long Bruce?”

And what? That doesn’t make sense. Dick’s not on drugs. He’d never do that. He saw how badly that affected Roy. He’d never start using. That’s not… 

He looks down to see that his sleeve has been rolled up. His left sleeve, the arm he doesn’t wear his medical ID on. The arm he always injects himself with antidotes on. The arm he’s got track marks on, from antitoxins and antivenoms and antidotes. Not from drugs, but Jason doesn’t know that. 

“Jay,” Dick tries but Jason rounds on him and snaps fingers in his face. 

“No, I’ve got words for you later.”

“M’not on drugs, Jay,” Dick mumbles, trying to push up his other sleeve, to show Jason the medical ID, with uncooperative limbs.

“What, are you gonna show me one clean arm and expect me to believe you? I saw the other one, genius!”

Dick shakes his head and makes a pathetic whimpering noise when that makes it feel like his brain is rattling around inside his skull. 

“Shut the fuck up, Bruce!” Jason shouts into the phone and Dick whines again. Jason’s quieter when he speaks again, but still seething. “This isn’t something you can just…” Jason’s eyes fall to Dick’s wrist when the metal of his bracelet glints in the light. “Fuck you, B, we’re gonna finish this later.”

Jason hangs up and tosses the phone to the other side of the room without looking to see where it falls. 

“What’s that, Dick?”

“Med ID,” Dick says quietly, running his thumb over the shiny metal plate, engraved with his name, Alfred’s phone number and ‘EPILEPSY’ in all caps. “M’not on drugs. The track marks are from antitoxins and stuff. I’ve been doin’ this a while, it adds up. I’m not on drugs,” he repeats. 

Jason knocks Dick’s hand out of the way so he can read the engraving on the ID. 

He sucks in a quiet breath through his teeth. 

“You’re epileptic?” 

Dick nods once, a shallow jerky gesture. He winces after. He really needs to stop moving around so much. 

“After… well, it was the last thing I did as Batman. It was a whole thing. But I got shot. Uh. I got shot in the head. I got better, obviously. It didn’t kill me. It just… fucked up my brain, I guess,” Dick says with a self-deprecating laugh. 

Jason’s eyes are wide, one hand still clutched around Dick’s wrist in a white knuckled grip. It kind of hurts, but Dick doesn’t say anything. 

“Why the hell would you keep that from us?”

Dick shrugs. “I’m on meds. I’ve been seizure free for six months, Jay. I was fine. It was fine, I had it under control. I just didn’t eat or drink enough or get enough sleep today. Still today, right? Whatever. I just. I’m fine. This was a fluke.”

“You can’t keep something like this from your  _ family _ , asshole!”

“Leslie knows. She’s the one who referred me to a neurologist that can be trusted with a little more than most.”

“Much as I love Leslie, she’s not family,” Jason snaps.

Dick twists his wrist out of Jason’s grasp.

“Dami, Bruce and Alfred know.”

“And what, you didn’t want to share with the rest of the class? You know you’ve got three other siblings, right? And a hell of a lot more people who care what happens to you? You’re lucky you came to me, Dick. What if you’d gone to Cassie or Tim or Babs? They wouldn’t have known how to take care of you as well as I did. They wouldn’t have known what was happening right away. Because you didn’t say anything. Do you get how dangerous that is?”

Dick is silent for a long moment. 

“Damian saw the first one,” he says, so quiet he can barely hear himself. 

“Speak up,” Jason demands.

“Dami was the only one there the first time I started seizing. Alf and Bruce got there quick enough, I guess, but Damian was the only one there at first and when I came back, he just… the first thing I saw was his face and he looked so fucking scared Jason, and he was scared for me and it looked so  _ wrong _ on him even though he’s just a kid and I--” Dick gags and has to lean over the bucket still at the side of sofa while he retches for a moment. He doesn’t vomit. Small mercies. 

Jason puts a hand on Dick’s shoulder and waits him out. 

“Don’t work yourself up so much, Goldie.”

Dick huffs out a humorless laugh. “I just didn’t want to scare you guys. I thought I’d just be fine.”

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” Dick looks up, a little hurt, only to find Jason smiling at him softly. “You’re such a self sacrificing moron. You’re our brother, dumbass. It doesn’t matter how bad it is. You need to tell us all these things. All of us. So we can help you. Cause that’s what family does.” 

“I--”

“If the next words out of your mouth are not ‘yes, of course’ or ‘will you tell Tim, Cass, Steph and Babs,’ I’m going to punch you in the head and you will deserve whatever that causes. I don’t want to hear anything else. Now get some rest.”

Dick just sighs and agrees and falls asleep.

~*~

Two weeks later, Dick comes home after informing the rest of the family to find a t-shirt folded neatly at the foot of his bed. Jason denies ever having been near Dick’s apartment. 

But the shirt, reading “MY BRAIN OCCASIONALLY MALFUNCTIONS” in large print, with “I have epilepsy” written much smaller underneath it, says enough about who left the gift.

**Author's Note:**

> scream at me on tumblr @ [grxysxns](http://grxysxns.tumblr.com/)


End file.
